Printed works at Chetham's

Josse Badius' Press at work

First acquisitions

The Library began to buy books in August 1655. Almost all of the early acquisitions were bought from London booksellers, the principal supplier being Robert Littlebury of Little Britain. In the first thirty years the Library bought heavily in theology, law, history, medicine and science. Most of the books were published overseas and many were bought second-hand. The aim was to build up as quickly as possible a collection of books on all subjects which would meet the needs of the clergy, lawyers and medics of Manchester and the surrounding towns. Thanks to their efforts the Library's reputation was quickly established: by the 1670s one scholar reported that Chetham's Library was 'better than any college library in Cambridge.'

  
Isaac Newton's Principia mathematica and the leaf from the Library's
Accessions register showing a record of its
purchase for 7/6 (10th item)

The Library matures

By the mid-eighteenth century the Library was regarded as a major scholarly collection of books and manuscripts covering what was then seen as the whole range of knowledge. In terms of acquisitions, there was a shift of emphasis at about that time towards older printed books, large illustrated works and multi-volume periodicals and journals. In 1791 the Library finally published a catalogue of its holdings. The catalogue, printed in two volumes, listed the books by subject and then by size. To make matters worse, the entire catalogue was in Latin.

  
Title page and colophon of the New Testament of the Complutensian Polyglot
The second image shows the radical Greek typeface

  
  
Title page of a polyglot psalter, and the title page
and images from a 1570 translation of Brant's Stultifera navis.
The fourth image illustrates 'the uselessness of books'

  
A binding for Henry VIII's library and a portrait binding of a copy of Milton

Collecting policies change

The Library defines its core collection as those works which were acquired from the 1650s up to 1851 when Chetham's ceased to be the main repository for reading matter in Manchester. Until the mid-nineteenth century, Chetham's could claim to be the only true public library in the country. However, following the creation of the rate-supported public libraries, the Library's governors decided that the policy of buying books on all subjects could no longer be sustained and that the Library should concentrate on history and topography. In the last century this policy was narrowed still further so that the Library now specialises in the history of the north-west of England. Paradoxically, the Library's attempt to reduce the subject scope of its coverage resulted in an increase in the number of books acquired. In the second half of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth the Library gained a large number of additional collections, often by donation. It is our intention to catalogue these collections over the course of 2002/2003.

Additional collections

Although Chetham's has never had a policy of dividing off particular groups of material into special collections, many of the new acquisitions and donations of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries fall into categories that can be usefully considered together. These include: the collection of John Byrom, shorthand writer and linguist; several other donated collections; 3,100 broadsides and single-sheet publications given by J.O. Halliwell-Phillipps; a collection of early maps; a variety of Scrapbooks containing rare ephemera; a significant collection of shorthand material; and c. 7,000 tracts and pamphlets of various dates. The Library now also has the library of the Heraldry Society on deposit.